Old Edson and the spirit

Old Edson watches purple light begin to swell behind the hills and thinks of his dead son.

Once, before the rains had come he called his dead son from the drying ground into the seeds within his calabash to ask for news about his nine lost cows. The spirit did not talk. Perhaps it laughed.

He shook the spirit once again when wind blew dust in red scarves on his field. All that touched his lips was borrowed grain and fruit his children picked from neighbours’ trees. Again, there was no answer in the shaken seed.

The third time it refused, he burned the ghost. He chained and lit it in a pile of rubber tyres and smelt the death of flesh in stinking smoke. The brown wood cracked and blackened all that night until the dawn bled mercy down the sky.

Edson’s lips moves as he stares into the sky. – It was not I who put you in the ground. It was not I who cut your head and left you there to drown.

Faint voices start to drift down from the village. Cows loll heavy horns and roll alien sounds with thick black tongues. Leaves rear through the mist soaked in dew. Small red birds scatter in the foliage.

Old Edson sees the sunlight paint the hills in greens across the mist and thinks of his dead son.

Eoghan Walls, a Derryman, studied and taught in Wales, Dublin and London before spending two years in rural Rwanda. His thoughts remain there as he teaches now in Germany.

The Stinging Fly magazine was established in 1997 to seek out, publish and promote the very best new Irish and international writing. We believe that there is a need for a magazine that, first and foremost, gives new and emerging writers an opportunity to get their work out into the world.